PECS (Picture exchange communication system)

Feeling a little overwhelmed with this project... we have done homemade picture schedules for CB and BH when they were younger, and I made a whole set of picture cards (from photographs) for LB last year at the suggestion of his speech therapist. I included pictures of his favorite foods and drinks, toys, shoes (to use when going out), family members, books, potty, pull-ups, sippy, you name it. Pretty everything I could think of that he might want to say or that we might want to show him or ask him about, it was in there. The idea was to be able to show him 2-3 cards and have him choose visually what he wanted (ie. show the card for juice and milk and let him tell us what he wants by choosing the card) or to show him what's coming up next (show the card for shoes when it's time to go somewhere). Unfortunately, he was not at all interested in using them for communication, if he saw them he wanted the whole stack so he could flip through them and name them. But if I tried asking him a question and showing him a couple of cards, he threw them at me. Sigh.

Ok, so that was several months ago, and he is now doing pretty well at using the cards in school and speech therapy. So I'm thinking it's time to try again with setting up a picture schedule and some picture cards for communication at home too. It's just such a daunting task! I've found a ton of sites where thankfully I can print out picture to use for free and then laminate them. But there are sooo many words and ideas to choose from. Obviously we need to start simple, so I need to figure out what are the most important ones to start with and go from there. Unfortunately the cards I made him before are destroyed so we're starting over. That's ok b/c I think the ones from school and speech are the ones w/ cartoon-like drawings rather than photos and apparently he likes those better.

If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment. Otherwise, wish me luck!!